How “Pop” Are the New Worship Songs? Investigating the Levels of Popular Cultural Influence on Contemporary Worship Music
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How “Pop” Are the New Worship Songs? Investigating the Levels of Popular Cultural Influence on Contemporary Worship Music LESTER RUTH Lester Ruth is Research Professor of Christian Worship at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, USA. Prior to teaching, he served several pastoral appointments in the Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. His doctorate in worship history is from the University of Notre Dame. It has become something of an obvious truism that many recently developed forms of Christian worship music reflect pop culture. Not only are these songs “popular,” in the sense of widespread dissemination and use, but they are also “pop”—that is, reflecting popular forms of a variety of non-worship music. Proponents of the new worship music advocate the similarity as part of their strategy, saying things like “Our songs sound like what people listen to on the radio and thus have been helpful in reaching them.” In contrast, detractors, noting the same connection between the new worship music and popular music, deplore the link and use it to raise the alarm for the integrity of worship.1 Disregarding the question of whether the popular nature of the new songs strengthens the church or not, many scholars have remarked on the correlation between popular secular music and contemporary worship songs (CWS). The connection is now so widely accepted that it has become a mainstay of overview essays on the topic (Scheer 2013, 176). One recent encyclopedia entry simply uses the term “Christian Popular Music” as the label for the new music in all its sub-genres (Ingalls, Mall, and Nekola 2013). What specifically makes the new worship music popular in terms of how it reflects popular music and pop culture outside the church? Most often, the emphasis on the popular nature of CWS notes the overlap in the sound of the two, especially with respect to the instruments used and the performance practices associated with the music. For example, in social historian Michael Hamilton’s seminal 1999 piece in Christianity Today trumpeting the “triumph of the praise song,” the subtitle identifies victor and loser: the guitar has beat out the organ. A change of sound was the perceived Waterloo of congregational music. If we push beyond just the sound of this new worship music, a look at the language of the song lyrics suggests that the relationship of the songs to pop culture is not a simple or straightforward one. The CWS are not simply pop music with a Christian veneer. In some respects the words of CWS are immersed in popular 1 For an example, see (Frankforter 2001, 45). For a more extensive review of such complaints, see (Nekola 2009). culture, directly reflecting that relationship. In other lyrical aspects, however, these songs exhibit a significant degree of similarity with pop music, without being as “pop” as pop music. In other dimensions the lyrics are connected more closely to important changes in mid-twentieth century liturgical life generally—shifts which seem to have only a tangential connection to pop culture per se (although pop culture took notice of the changes in worship). In other words, the relationship between CWS and pop culture is more complicated than has sometimes been portrayed, especially in non-scholarly literature arguing vehemently for or against contemporary worship songs. I hope to bring nuance to this discussion—even the scholarly portrayal of the correlation between popular secular music and CWS—by looking at three language-related dimensions of the lyrics of the most popular CWS: the structural form of the lyrics; the level of colloquial qualities; and the loss of archaic English.2 Each of these dimensions, in turn, shows a different level of influence between pop music and CWS. A fair method for compiling a CWS corpus Given the controversy evident in discussions of CWS, I believe the key to a fair analysis is designing a neutral, objective method of determining a body of song, a method which does not predetermine the conclusions. Fortunately, the twice-yearly, Top 25 song lists from Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI), the copyright clearinghouse that grants churches permission to use the songs, provides such a corpus. These Top 25 lists are compiled from the usage reported by a sample of churches in six-month periods so that CCLI can pay out its license fees as royalties based on actual usage. The data below represent the 110 songs which have appeared on these lists for the United States, from the first list released in 1989 through the list released in February 2015. The CCLI was used not only to compile the corpus, but also for the form of the lyrics as found on its SongSelect website. (A list of the CWS considered in this article appears in the Appendix.) Lyrical form Of the three language-related aspects of the CWS that I am considering, the aspect that shows the closest connection to pop culture and pop culture influence is lyrical form—that is, verses, choruses, bridges, and 2 This article builds upon recent work looking at the lyrics of CWS, including Woods and Walrath 2007. For a closer examination of the theology of CWS lyrics, see within that volume my essay “’How Great Is Our God?’ The Trinity in Contemporary Christian Worship Music,” 29–42. Further exploration of the theology can be found in: Ruth 2008 and 2015; Thornton 2015; and Parry 2012. How “Pop” Are the New Worship Songs BY LESTER RUTH 2015: VOL. 3, NO. 1 A2 other structural features.3 Assessing the forms of the songs shows that CWS have begun to follow the lead of recent pop music more closely, to the point of introducing musical forms not seen before even in early forms of contemporary Christian worship. The issue is not just that contemporary worship songs generally differ from the strophic verse forms of older hymns or even the later adapted form in which a refrain is sung between verses. There has been an evolution in the most used forms of contemporary worship songs: the earlier simple forms have been supplanted by more complex compound forms involving combinations of verses, choruses, bridges and other miscellaneous pieces. This development likely means that English-speaking congregations worshiping with the latest CWS are singing structurally more complex music forms now than at any other time in Protestant worship history (even as perhaps the loss of 4-part harmony to a single congregational melody line has meant the songs have gotten less complex in other ways). These complex forms reflect the influence of pop musicians, especially musicians popular in the 1990s. The groups scholars most frequently reference include Coldplay, Radiohead, The Proclaimers, R.E.M., Duncan Sheik, and—especially—U2.4 The influence of pop on worship songwriters is not surprising, and Greg Scheer notes this influence for all of CWS: “From Love Song to Third Day, it would be difficult to think of any praise and worship music styles that had no precedent in pop music” (Scheer 2013, 199). But connection and influence do not mean the forms of CWS have always mirrored the current state of pop music. In fact, although CWS always reflected popular music forms, they typically lagged behind them until the late 1990s.5 At that time the gap closed as more complex compound forms became predominant in the most used CWS. Thus, according to musicologist Margaret Brady, the history of musical style in CWS in the United States, including the history of musical form, is one of an ever-shrinking gap between the trends in popular music and tendencies in CWS, until the gap disappears in the late 1990s with an “invasion” of music written by overseas authors and their close associates. Until the mid-1990s (based on the copyright dates for songs),6 the lyrical 3 For my analysis of the structural features of the lyrics, I am relying upon the presentation of the lyrics on the CCLI website. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the CCLI labeling. Because I have looked only at the lyrics and not the musical (sound) features of the songs, as written or in practice, I acknowledge the limitations of my conclusions. Further work needs to be done with regard to a closer analysis of the music of these songs. 4 Scheer 2013, 187–188; Ingalls 2008, 139–140; Ingalls [forthcoming]. 5 Brady 2007, 161, 163. 6 I am presuming a time delay of a few years between the copyright date of a song and its appearance on a Top 25 list. How “Pop” Are the New Worship Songs BY LESTER RUTH 2015: VOL. 3, NO. 1 A3 forms of almost all CWS were either a simple chorus or a combination of verse (or verses) with chorus. Behind these forms are several styles: hymns, folk songs, pop songs, and Gospel music. But the lag between these songs and their non-worship counterparts could be significant. With a small handful of exceptions, the most popular CWS of the 1970s stayed firmly entrenched in the popular musical styles of the 1950s and 1960s. Even in the 1980s seven new songs were written in the style of 1950s pop song. By the 1980s, Brady asserts, at least some of the songs were only ten years behind and some were hedging close (Brady 2007, 157–160). The gap closed in the late 1990s, with what ethnomusicologist Monique Ingalls calls the “British Invasion”: songs from overseas songwriters and companies—first British and then Australian—made inroads into American repertoires.7 These songs had copyright dates starting in the mid-1990s, beginning with 1994's “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever,” written by Martin Smith and recorded by his band Delirious?.